In a thermal printer device that carries out printing by means of an ink ribbon, a thermal printing head is pressed on the ink ribbon. The ink ribbon, in turn, contacts a paper sheet, and a portion of the ink from the ink ribbon is transferred onto the paper sheet in the presence of heat generated by the thermal printing head. The ink ribbon utilized in the thermal printer device has an ink surface on one side of a film. As the ink surface is only present on one side of the film, there are two possible winding directions when installed in the thermal printer device, namely, an ink-surface-outward (outer ink surface) winding direction with the ink surface on the outer side of the winding, and an ink-surface-inward (inner ink surface) winding direction with the ink surface on the inner side of the winding.
The winding direction of the ink ribbons used with conventional thermal printer devices varies between different models of thermal printer devices. Therefore, ink ribbons of both winding direction types are available. However, a conventional thermal printer device only accepts ink ribbons with a single winding direction. Consequently, the ink ribbon used in the conventional thermal printer device is limited to only one type of ink ribbon of either the ink-surface-outward winding direction type or ink-surface-inward winding direction type. While both types of ink ribbon are available, the inability of a conventional thermal printer device to utilize both types of ink ribbon limits the usefulness of such devices.